The present disclosure relates generally to client terminals and particularly to mobile communication devices.
Mobile communication devices may offer a wide range of functionality beyond basic voice calls. For example, the functionalities may include text messaging, Instant Messenger (IM) based messaging, mobile internet services, etc. In mobile communication devices such as smartphones and tablets, even more functionality is integrated such as email, social networking, maps and navigation, and many other applications. In the present disclosure, the terms client terminal, user terminal, user equipment, smartphone, mobile, mobile device or tablet are used interchangeably. The various functionalities at the application level may be supported by different underlying wireless technologies. For example, the mobile communication capability for voice call and internet may be provided by a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system of 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). Alternatively, Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), also commonly known as Wi-Fi, based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 family standards may be used for wireless communication. A client terminal may also have a receiver for a Global Positioning System (GPS) for location determination. A client terminal may have other technologies for location determination such as Observed Time Difference of Arrival (OTDOA), Angle of Arrival (AoA), etc. The location information may be expressed in terms of latitude and longitude coordinates. A client terminal may use other technologies to enable the wireless communication capability.
The increased functionality of client terminals has led to a common scenario where users are connected to their contacts and to the local, regional, and global events almost all the time. Any event update by any of the applications running in a client terminal may be notified to a user in different ways such as an audible incoming call ringing sound, vibrations, notification beeps and other sounds, flashing display, etc. The various methods of notifying an event to a user are collectively referred herein as event notification alerts. As users carry their client terminals with them to many places, there is a greater need for minimizing the disturbance due to the event notification alerts. For example, when going to any quiet place such as a library, an office, an auditorium, a movie theatre, etc., it may be required to disable, at least partially, the notification of various events such as incoming calls, text messages, emails, voice mails, social networking updates, etc. In some cases, even the non-audible alerts such as vibration or flashing display may not be acceptable. Many users keep their client terminals near them when they go to sleep. It may be undesirable to provide any type of alert when a user is resting.
While manually turning on and off the event notification alerts may work, it may be tedious to have to do that multiple times every day. Furthermore, the user may forget to turn on or off the event notification alerts. Conventional client terminals offer capability to disable event notification alerts. The disabling can be done at different levels such as no audible alerts but vibration alerts may be allowed or completely silent but the display may light when an event requiring notification alert occurs, etc. A shortcoming of the conventional methods is that often users do not remember to disable the event notification alerts or to re-enable the event notification alerts or turn the mobile device back on after they leave quiet public places or when they wakeup. This may lead to disturbance in case of not disabling event notification alerts or, if not re-enabling event notification alerts, it may lead to missed phone calls, delayed response to text messages, and other missed events or delayed response to events. This may cause variety of problems due to disturbance caused to others, or problems for the user depending on the nature of the calls or text messages that may be missed or responded with delay.